


Close Encounters of the Nobrean Kind

by hexenritter



Category: Brigador (Video Game)
Genre: Brigador, Fandom, Fiction, Other, Stellar Jockeys, video games - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:22:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23923018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hexenritter/pseuds/hexenritter
Summary: A short fic depicting an unfortunate and yet at the same time very fortunate encounter between an ex-soldier and a figure from his past.





	Close Encounters of the Nobrean Kind

I woke with the feeling of cotton wool in my mouth, as well as a bitter taste that left my tongue slightly numb. How I had arrived here, I was entirely unaware. The where was also a question mark the size of one of the city's orbital cannons. I became aware of this burning pain in my shoulders, and my hands were numb. It was about then that I realised I was dangling by my wrists in a warehouse that had clearly been depurposed by the regime and left to squatters years ago. 

I was surrounded by the heavy smell of machine oil, petroleum, and burning rubber, accented with the stink of that weed the kids in the Necropoli smoke. There were mountains of stacked NEP crates and mechanical components stacked twice the height of a Mog forming a partition or room of sorts around me and my restraints were hanging off a hundred ton vehicle lift so my feet weren't touching the cement floor. Also, I was naked, and as I started to get feeling back in the rest of my body, and judging by the sheen on my skin, I'd been oiled from head to toe. 

I'm not going to lie here, I'd already started panicking the moment I realised I was strung up like a carcass in a butcher's shop, but the oil and nakedness just made it weird. You know? 

Looking around again I spotted a bunch of thick cables tied together every few feet leading in from the only gap in the stacked crates, over to what looked like a Model 86H portable field terminal. Those are military spec, issued to field comms guys and sometimes "borrowed" by the occasional butter bar who's addicted to syncnet sex chat rooms. They also have an encryption card that isn't exactly available on the open market so these things don't tend to find themselves in the hands of civvies. 

"Ah, you're awake. Lovely." I heard, though it was like I heard it through a metal tube, from far away. The closest similar thing I can think of is the way everything sounds right before you go under anaesthesia at the dentist. I looked over at my captor. I'd say he was maybe six feet even, muscled in a way that only comes from a protein-rich diet. He was grimy in a way that looked like he'd been working on a car, all streaked with oil and engine dirt, and after a toke on the cigarette in his hand, he breathed plumes of thick white smoke out of his nostrils in a slightly stuttered way, like a chuckling bull.

"You look familiar..." I said back, choking on the words as the dryness in my throat made itself evident. I tried to swallow a few times, working my jaw like I was chewing the air just to try and get a drop of saliva.

He just sort of nodded a bit, gesturing at me with the cigarette a couple of times as he walked around the car lift, around behind me where I couldn't see him. I almost shit myself when he popped around my left shoulder, inches from my face. There may or may not have been a little shriek of surprise when he appeared right there. 

After walking away, laughing again at my misfortune, he turned, "I know you too, pumpkin," he said matter-of-factly. "And we're going to spend a little quality time together tonight. I'm in the mood for something intimate, something personal, so I thought I'd have you for dinner."

Then, as he stood there, alternating between glancing over at the field terminal and me, a knowing smile on his face, it hit me. It was the way he said that last bit. There was a guy in my old division's Bravo Company back before I mustered out for shroom lung who was the go-to when you wanted a little something-something to cut loose on, or if you needed a synthetic sledgehammer to put you to sleep hard enough you didn't dream. I don't remember the guy's name but I recognised the wheat blonde hair, shaved on the sides and greased up into a short mohawk, I recognised that creepy smile, and I recognised the way that it never made it to his eyes. You don't forget a smile like that.

"GREAT LEADER IS DEAD. SOLO NOBRE MUST FALL. HERE IS YOUR CONTRACT." That caught his attention. And mine. It was a weird, robotic voice, and it came from the field terminal. I tried to make out what was on the screen but it looked like it had glitched out, at the time I thought it'd been hit with a virus or something because it just had a skull and sword on it. I found out later exactly what that image was. 

After a short while hunched over the terminal, he started laughing almost giddily, like a kid who'd just been given the keys to Khan Dee's Colossal Confection Emporium out in Lannois. "I'm off out," he said as he walked over to a tool caddy, pulling out an inhaler and a small canister, assembling it and taking the mother of all huffs on it. He held it in for a few seconds, grinned over at me and exhaled. Even from several feet away I saw his pupils turn to pinholes. He rode out a full body shudder and then walked off, double-time, making finger guns at me, speaking like he'd just been sped up like an old vinyl. "Why don't you hang around here for a bit."

That was the last I ever saw of him. The recovery teams found me almost a week later, but it wasn't for another month, most of which I was in a medically induced coma, that I found out from another guy in the recovery ward just who it was. When the guy said "Joybastard," I immediately remembered a half-overheard urban legend about a drug-fuelled, hard-partying crow whose car was supposedly covered in human skin, with a quilt of faces on the hood. Suddenly, I decided that a hemicorporectomy and having to shit into a bag for the rest of my life was getting off easy.

\- Santiago Alvarez, NEP Corporal (Ret.), 106th Light Infantry Battalion.


End file.
